At the end of this year, I'd like to take a look back and echo the sentiments of Jinghao and remind everyone that this is a lifetime community.

We have met, grew and drifted apart together, but 2012 should be a year of celebration and reconnection, and I'd like to start by returning to the community. While we are all older now with more commitments and responsibilities than we did 3/4/5 years ago, this doesn't need to be the daily commitment it once was. I for one will aim to come on here for a few hours every week to catch up, chat and reconnect with my fellow forum friends.

So heres to the past and here's to the future and let's get the doors ready and open to welcome back all our old friends. Try to track down anyone you have on email / facebook / twitter etc and convince them to come back into the fold.

Tis the season of finals for me, and you know what that means! Procrastination.

What better way to procrastinate than to look back at Origin three or four years ago and see the activities of those times. Honestly, we were a precursor to more centralized social networks like Facebook or MySpace, except we really connected as a community, and we should be immensely proud of that. I know I am.

Reading posts from the past, seeing the community, really induced tears of nostalgia. Origin is such a large part of my life—its origins were during my middle school years—and I'm sure many of you could say the same.

Origin will be a lifetime community. Although our lives' paths have crossed and turned and many of us have gone to college or work, Origin will always have a place in the origin of my heart.

We've always wanted to collaborate on a project together and produce something we can all call our own. After discussing with some Origin members, I discovered that the consensus is a turn-based strategy game.

Why a turn based strategy game?

First of all, developing a game that involves little real-time player-to-player interaction is definitely within the capacities of the people here. It's definitely something we can all do together successfully.

Second of all, strategy suits Origin. We debate, discuss, philosophize; we like games that require us to think. We love forming strategies. It'll definitely allow us to be more focused and enthusiastic about the project.

Third of all, a turn-based strategy game is easy to modularize—A can make maps 1-5, B can make maps 6-8, and so on. It's not something that will grind to a halt when my schedule peaks. It's something we can work on progressively and measure progress continually on.

Origin's full of very capable individuals, and I'm confident we can achieve our goals. I can personally identify at least 5 members who are able and willing to take part in the project. How better to celebrate our 7th year of existence than by making a game?

If you're interested, I will post the details in a separate forum we will be using for all further details and discussions regarding the project: http://originxt.com/cat/187

This is the first step of my plan to renovate Origin. The main concern has been that Origin has no unifying theme. It started off as an Anime site—good. Then it turned into an RP site—good. But soon, that died and Origin just became a place where people relaxed and discussed random topics with each other.

Origin still does not have a theme as concrete as Pokemon or Futuristic RPing, but we don't need to—it's okay for every one of us to have distinct, unique interests as long as we can find ways of having fun together. Today you see the first result of that realization: Origin is now split into five distinct zones that best identify the five distinct fields of interest of our members. The latter four of them will revolve around the first in a planetary fashion (as if they were satellites/moons of the planet in the middle), and each will feature a town theme.

The first is the obvious: Official stuff, including our news category, our project factory, and the submission forums.

The second is the general discussion location, from the more intellectual stuff (The Academy) to the more playful stuff (Amusement Park).

The third contains a slightly reorganized version of our RP/Creative Writing section, with the town theme in mind.

The fourth contains all of the categories we'd normally associate with entertainment: Gaming, movies, TV shows, Anime/Manga, and music.

The last (fifth) is the technology center, for discussions about the latest processor, website design, domain services, programming, and other technology-related topics.

As you can see, we've worked hard to get the town theme in every one of our "zones" (or satellites). We're still working on the unifying theme that ties each satellite to our main planet (besides gravity of course), so expect that some time!

As you might have noticed, the motivation behind these changes is to allow Origin to appeal to a broader audience. Instead of interfering with the experience of another member, the member with his unique interests should enrich the community (culturally and socially) for everyone, even those who don't share the same interests. By organizing into zones, we allow people with opposite interests to get out of each other's way—for example, if you don't care about programming, you won't see programming-related stuff (unless you tried to); yet they can still share their days, rant about stuff, play some games with each other in the Origin Town.

This concludes the changes you see today.

The next change will further solidify the theme we're going for—the planetary, spatial, even geocentric theme. You'll just have to keep your heads up and be ready for what's coming in the days/weeks ahead!

I'd like comments/criticisms/praises! regarding this change and perhaps suggestions for what you'd like to see in later changes. Thanks everyone!

The Z Saga II, sequel to the phenomonally successful Z Saga RP of 2005, is now officially open.

Even if you have never RPed before, I encourage you to check out The Discussion Topic to see what it's all about.

Please, even if it is your first RP, come and join in here!! The last one was great fun, but it all depends on large audience participation. Feel free to simply read the topic by all means, but even if you consider yourself an amateur, have no fear to just jump in and join in the fun!!

Also, advertise us anywhere you think there may be fellow RPers/Storytellers lurking - the more the merrier, even n00bs are welcome!!

Sorry guys, I'm swamped! I have midterms, projects, work, interviews, and of course other stuff to prepare for, complete, finish, etc, and as such I will be less active here (I will still lurk and sometimes post, although more about administrative matters)

In my stead I've temporarily made Garlic an administrator. He's been on Origin for a while and he knows us well. When I can resume normal activity , unless everyone impresses me not to, I will shift Garlic to a more "staff" role (moderator/representative) (just so you know I'm not giving anyone special favors)

We in the staff (or rather Jinghao) have decided to allow double posting in threads that seem to address multiple topics. It's very easy for one topic to divide into many others, and as a moderator, it's difficult to split a topic which addresses multiple points. If each topic is kept in separate posts, that would make it a lot easier to split, and keep on topic.

So, if responding to a thread that has diverged to more than one topic, make two posts which address each topic separately. Please don't abuse this though, only use it when appropriate.